


Our Own Way

by sparkandwolf (thatnerdemryn)



Series: How the Scene Should Have Gone - Sterek Edition [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Coda, Developing Friendships, Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e11 Battlefield, Light Angst, M/M, Panic Attacks, Unexpected Fluff, vaguely romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatnerdemryn/pseuds/sparkandwolf
Summary: Stiles would give anything for peace. He knew that in the comfort of the clothed interior of his jeep, he wasn’t drowning. But behind his clenched eyes, all he could see was water. It was dripping, the sound overwhelming his senses almost as much as the weightlessness. He was floating with each breath he didn’t take and he waited. Waited for the serenity of his lungs finally winning their battle.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: How the Scene Should Have Gone - Sterek Edition [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668073
Comments: 6
Kudos: 165





	Our Own Way

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first rewrites I wanted to take a stab at because I love the idea of Derek and Stiles understanding each other more than anyone else. 
> 
> Thank you to [Morgan](https://skylar102.tumblr.com/) for reading this over and screaming at me about it. Don't know what I would do without you!
> 
> “We each survive in our own way.” ― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

Stiles knew he shouldn’t have skipped school. His dad was already pissed off enough at him; from keeping secrets, sneaking around with dark and twisty criminals, and showing up at crime scenes without explanation. Missing school could mean ruining his practically perfect grade point average and maybe the potential of actually playing in the championship game. 

The thing was, Stiles hadn’t ever skipped school without Scott and when they had before, it was for video game premieres and more recently, werewolf activities. Stiles honestly wasn’t sure how his life had turned into what it was. He glanced out the window of his jeep and the chilly breeze hitting his face was comforting against his skin. His cheeks were still hot from the trail of tears that he had wiped away before facing his father in the morning. 

Stiles didn’t know how to handle everyone’s suffering around him. Jackson was the puppet for a psychopath self-proclaimed vigilante and Stiles was frustratingly annoyed with how un-Jackson-like he had been. He wouldn’t let anyone in. Lydia tried and failed too many times to count, Scott had pounded on the door with all of the strength he had, even Stiles camped outside his door blasting the most annoying music he could think of, hoping to coax him out. Nothing worked and Stiles felt like he had no choice but to give up. 

He had a hard time even thinking about Scott. His best friend had never been so at odds with the person he loved most in the world and it pained him. His mom was barely able to look at him, let alone talk about what she saw at the station. He felt selfish, that all he could think about was how his father would react when he finally knew the truth. Scott struggled not being able to talk to his mom before and now when he finally could, she was avoiding him. 

Allison was pushing further and further away from Scott with every passing hour and Stiles could see the effect of it on everyone. He couldn’t bring himself to be mad at her, though; not when her mother was dead. Stiles knew more than anyone else how impossible it was to go back to normal after something like that. He wanted to be there for her, tell her how much he truly understood how she was feeling. But he thought of how his mother had died of seemingly natural causes and he didn’t think it was fair to compare the two. 

Lydia seemed to be the only one handling the past few months with a semblance of normalcy. He thought back to her party and the way she smiled her usual bright grin that usually had Stiles’ heart skipping in his chest. She threw one hell of a party and the fact it ended in, well, death, should have affected her more than it seemed to. Stiles couldn’t think about that. If she was still laughing after everything, who was he to take that away from her?

He felt the panic attack coming. It was the reason he had skipped school in the first place. He thought the drive would subdue it, calm his brain enough to knock it out of his system, but it did the opposite. It gave him too much time to think; to feel for his friends, his family, their families. And it was like water rushing straight into his chest. The air pushed from his lungs as the tide rose and he gasped, trying to take in whatever air he could. His heart was beating rapidly. He could hear it reverberating in his ears, feel it with the hand grasping at his chest with almost enough force to tear at his shirt. 

He thought about nine-year-old Matt and what he must have felt like drowning in an abyss of water with no one to help him, to save him. His vision flashed to the blue of Matt’s lips, the paleness of his skin, and the tiny beads of water dripping down his face as his dad zipped up the black bag to cover his face. Stiles wondered idly if it felt like a panic attack. 

He had read about voluntary apnea; the way a person’s lungs won’t let them inhale until it feels like their head is about to explode. Like their heart might stop beating if they don’t at least  _ try _ to fill their lungs with air. Right before they black out, that’s when a person’s lungs win. They take that breath and the water flows down, like liquid peace erupting through their body. 

Stiles would give anything for peace. He knew that in the comfort of the clothed interior of his jeep, he wasn’t drowning. But behind his clenched eyes, all he could see was water. It was dripping, the sound overwhelming his senses almost as much as the weightlessness. He was floating with each breath he didn’t take and he waited. Waited for the serenity of his lungs finally winning their battle. 

A hand grasped his shoulder and he inhaled sharply, a gasping, hoarse cry that seemed to echo through the trees surrounding him. He kept breathing, even as he was pulled from his jeep, led up ash covered stairs, and pushed onto a ratted sofa. He gripped at the cushions, plucking the insides out like he needed the softness. He needed to feel something besides the pain that seemed ever present, unwilling to alleviate no matter how hard he tried. 

And he tried, god, he tried. His breathing slowed, the hand running over his back a welcome comfort, and the familiar scent of spice and earth grounded his racing heart. He opened his eyes, waiting for the burn of chemical filled water he was convinced he would feel, but it didn’t come. He looked around frantically, his surroundings shockingly familiar and it seemed to kickstart his brain. 

“What am I--?” The gentle hand on his back pulled away and Stiles backed up at the abruptness, crawling on his hands to the edge of the couch. A different kind of panic surged through him, but it calmed in an incredibly surprising way when he saw Derek next to him. His face was soft, almost concerned if Stiles didn’t know any better. “--Doing here?” Stiles finished his sentence, a question he wasn’t sure even Derek knew the answer to when his eyebrows furrowed. 

“I heard your heartbeat,” Derek said simply, his eyes suddenly fixed to the floor in front of them. Stiles stared at him and rested his hand over said pulse, thankful for the distant thump of it. “I smelled your fear, too. Are you…?” Derek trailed off, chancing a glance over at Stiles. Stiles gulped and nodded quickly on impulse. When Derek raised his eyebrows in disbelief, Stiles let out a watery chuckle and shook his head. 

“How did we get here?” Stiles finally looked around. He hadn’t been inside Derek’s poor excuse of a house many times and when he was, he was usually too focused on not dying to take it in. The walls and every piece of what might have been art on them were black, a shadow of what they were. The floors looked barely stable enough to hold his weight, let alone his and Derek’s, and were covered in ash. Stiles wanted to question why Derek hadn’t swept it up, but he remembered his mother’s jewelry littering the bathroom sink and how long it stayed there after she had died and he knew the answer. 

“You were close. Your jeep is parked down the road, but you were… what were you doing, Stiles?” Derek asked, his gaze laced with a worry Stiles didn’t think he deserved. He rested his fingers in his lap, plucking at the skin around them as he bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t want to look back at Derek. He knew all he would see was pity and he didn’t need that. Derek’s help should be reserved for the rest of his friends who needed it, deserved it, more than he did. 

“Didn’t you hear? I’m a rebel now,” Stiles joked, trying with everything in him to form his trademark smirk. “I’m skipping school to go run around with wolves,” he said, gesturing half heartedly in Derek’s direction. He wasn’t amused, though, and Stiles didn’t really expect him to be. There was a long silence, one that Stiles wasn’t about to break. He figured it was someone else’s turn to talk too much. 

“Don’t you have the championship game tomorrow night?” Derek asked. Stiles gaped at him, tilting his head. 

“How do you know about that?” If Stiles didn’t know any better, he would have thought Derek looked away to hide the blush covering his cheeks. He stared at the floor again, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck. 

“Scott,” Derek said simply, but Stiles didn’t believe him. It wasn’t like they talked about such mundane things like Scott’s next lacrosse game. Derek was not on the list of people Stiles expected to see in the stands, cheering them on. “I also heard,” Derek started, finally looking back up at Stiles, “that you might have a chance at stepping onto the field this time around.” Stiles watched him for a moment. He didn’t know why he’d never noticed the little flecks of gold that seemed hidden in his hazel eyes. Though he realized it wasn’t often that he saw Derek without the glowing red alpha stare filled with anger and usual annoyance. As a human, Derek had kind eyes and that hit Stiles harder than he thought it should. 

“You mean since one of my teammates is dead and another is ‘missing’?” Stiles didn’t mean the words to come out so harshly. Derek needed a pack, he was an alpha after all, and if Stiles had learned anything it was how instinctual the need for a pack was. It didn’t help that Derek flinched at Stiles’ words. 

“Stiles…” Derek started to speak, but he shook his head, like nothing he could say would ease the anxiety in Stiles. He was right, really. There was so much wrong in his life and so much of it had started with Derek. Obviously Stiles didn’t care too much about it because, in the midst of an hours long panic, he drove to the one place he knew Derek would have been. He decided to deflect with humor, the only defense he thought he had. 

“Should you be taking notes or something?” Derek tilted his head at Stiles. “I can probably pay you for the therapy session we’re having, too. My dad’s been pushing me to see our guidance counselor, but I guess a twenty-something murder suspect is probably just as qualified,” Stiles said with a teasing tone on his lips. It seemed to work as Derek’s lips twitched upward, the closest thing to a smile Stiles had ever seen on his face. 

“I’ll send you notes and a bill when I know you’re okay,” Derek replied. Stiles’ heart skipped, barely noticeable to him, but he thought that Derek could probably hear it. He didn’t say anything if he did. 

“You’re gonna remember all of this?” Stiles commented as he pushed up from where he was leaning on the side of the couch. He was sitting closer to Derek, enough to feel the warmth radiating off of him, their thighs only centimeters away. Neither of them made a move to touch the other, though, both seemingly content with this newfound comfort they had in each other. 

“Do you wanna talk about it? About whatever brought you here?” Derek asked gently. Stiles wanted to say no and resisted the urge to sprint out of the house, away from the one person he felt like he could actually talk to. Instead, he sighed and rested his head in his hands, closing his eyes tightly. He didn’t realize how tired he was until that moment when he struggled to open them again. 

“I’m fine, really. There’s some insomnia, but nothing I’m not used to,” Stiles began. There was a creek behind them and Stiles turned, his knee knocking into Derek’s causing a sharp pain to shoot up his leg. There was nothing there but the empty hallway and the scattered remains of ceiling boards. Stiles let himself breathe again. “There may be some jumpiness?” Stiles said with a shrug. 

“That it?” Derek asked, clearly not believing any of what Stiles was saying. Stiles leaned back on the couch and let his head fall over the edge as he stared up at the charred ceiling. He could practically see the sky through the cracks in the foundation. 

“I mean, I guess there’s this constant, overwhelming, crushing fear that something incredibly terrible is going to happen,” Stiles decided, lifting his head back up to glance over at Derek. “But that’s just my life now, isn’t it?” There was hope in his tone, like he wanted Derek to say otherwise. Like he needed Derek to tell him that being part of this new world where his best friend was a werewolf and his childhood enemy was a supernatural lizard wasn’t always going to be this  _ hard _ . 

“It’s called hyper-vigilance,” Derek said. Stiles had heard of the term before. A few of his dad’s deputies who had served in the military had been diagnosed when they came back from overseas. When he looked it up, because of course that was the first thing Stiles did, he remembered it sounding like a constant state of panic. Those people would be constantly scanning their environment, waiting for something to happen; to be attacked, shot at, bombed. Stiles shook his head. 

“It’s not just a feeling, Derek,” Stiles said. The difference between him and all of the deputies was simple in Stiles’ head. They weren’t in danger, not like they were in uniform. Stiles was sitting next to an alpha werewolf, was best friends with a beta, and had an increasing amount of supernatural events happening in his life. It wasn’t just a feeling because he knew, with everything in him, that something bad was inevitably going to happen. “It’s like--” Stiles struggled with the words, not knowing if it was the words themselves or who he was admitting all of this to. But Derek’s concerned face had him talking anyway. “It’s like I’m about to have a panic attack. All the time. Like I can’t even breathe,” Stiles said. As if on cue, his lungs constricted and he inhaled sharply like a reminder to himself that he could. 

“Like you’re drowning?” Stiles knew it was a shot in the dark, that Derek was smart enough to connect the dots between Stiles’ panic and Matt’s death, but it still stunned him into silence. Derek turned toward him, the press of his knee against Stiles’ thigh keeping him unexpectedly grounded. “So if you’re drowning, you keep your mouth closed, right? You keep it closed until the last possible moment until you choose to open it,” Derek explained. 

Stiles shook his head again. “It’s not a choice, Derek. It’s a reflex,” he argued. Derek leaned forward, peering into Stiles’ eyes like he was searching for something and Stiles wasn’t sure what he was searching for. 

“But if you can hold off until the reflex kicks in, then you have more time. You can give yourself more time to fight your way to the surface,” Derek said. Stiles heard the belief in his voice, like he thought Stiles had the strength to fight through it; fight through the panic he had let consume him only moments before. 

“I guess. But it’s just more time to be in agonizing pain,” Stiles countered, reverting back to his previous thoughts. Head exploding and lungs burning until a person had no choice but to die. 

“If it means survival, isn’t the agony worth it?” Stiles wasn’t sure that question was only for him. Derek wasn’t looking at him anymore, his eyes glued to the floor instead. Stiles reached forward and rested a hand on his thigh, pulling Derek back from wherever he was going. 

“Is it?” They watched each other with careful glances, each silently reassuring the other that they weren’t alone. Stiles knew he wasn’t; he had Scott, Allison, Lydia, his dad. Even with that knowledge, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Derek was the one there with him when he needed it most. Derek was the one who heard his heartbeat, smelled his fear, consoled him from panic. 

“I guess it depends,” Derek stated, his hand resting gently on top of Stiles’. The touch was simple, just a resting brush, not much to think about. But it said everything Stiles needed to know. Derek was a means of survival for him, even if he didn’t want him to be. They needed each other, more than Stiles thought he needed anyone else in their makeshift pack. 

“On what?” Stiles asked, his voice uncharacteristically shy and soft as he peered up at Derek from underneath his eyelashes. Derek shook his head and sighed, pulling his hand away from Stiles’ and standing up more abruptly than Stiles thought he might have intended. 

“How much you want to survive... and who you’re surviving for?” Derek replied. Stiles nodded at him as he followed him to the door. Derek leaned against it and watched as Stiles walked off of the porch. Stiles stopped, turning to look back at Derek and sent him a thankful smile. 

“‘We each survive in our own way’.” Stiles quoted as he walked backwards down the dirt drive. “We’ll survive in our own way… together, okay?” Derek nodded at him, a silent promise that Stiles held onto when he forgot who he was surviving for. 

**Author's Note:**

> I truly hope you enjoyed this. I have a [Tumblr](https://sparkandwolf.tumblr.com) specifically for my Sterek obsession so feel free to follow it for updates and snippets and other Sterek content and use my ask to send me prompts, coda ideas, or just scream with me about Sterek. 
> 
> Also, feel free to follow my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thatnerdemilyj) and let me know what you think. 
> 
> Please, please, please let me know your thought in the comments and leave kudos if you enjoyed it!


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